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Over at Pajamas Media, the estimable Richard Fernandez tells the melancholy tale of Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean man who, convinced by his Marxist education that North Kora was a worker’s paradise, decided to defect there with his wife and two children in 1986. Oh, who had just completed his PhD in Germany in Marxist economics and who “had been active in left-wing groups” had no reason to doubt the beckoning invitation of North Korean officials who promised him free health care and a government job, like certain other people you may know.

He chose poorly.

Aged and broken, Oh now concludes that his “life was ruined by his decision to defect to North Korea. Seventy years old, he still does not know the fate of his wife and daughters — either dead or imprisoned in a labor camp.” His wife, who lacked the benefit of a European education,suspected something was amiss from the first. She was aghast when he told her of his plan to defect.

“Do you know what kind of place it is?” she asked. “You have not even been there once. How can you make such a reckless decision?”

But Oh replied that the Northerners were Koreans too —they”cannot be that brutal”, he told her.